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Wood jazz. Like musicians improvising, the authors do not use any drawings for the 200 series (left and above). Instead, the design of each gate is driven by a process of intuition. be installed in bone-chilling Minnesota, the temperate climates of the Pacific Coast, or the humid smorgasbord of Florida. Because our gates in particular are meant to remain in service for the long haul and can account for a sizable investment by homeowners, their greatest vulnerability should be the unlikely event of a collision with a wayward asteroid and not a failure of construction or a substandard wood choice. Good wood With its life span of several thousand years, the coastal redwood would seem to be the 72 FINE HOMEBUILDING ideal species to use in gate construction. It’s practically indestructible—thanks to its pecu liar repellent tannins—to the point where its only real enemy is the chainsaw. But not all redwood is the same. The redwood used by Charles and other craftsmen in this region during the 1960s and ’70s was all salvaged from the first- and secondgrowth trees that had been used to build San Francisco and that were milled within a 20-mile radius of the city (most of which were lost in the fire following the 1906 earthquake). However, the redwood found in today’s market has been harvested on a 30-year, commercial-growth cycle. For a species that doesn’t mature until its trees are 150 years old, the tannins that account for its exalted status are not fully developed as a decay-resistant property. One look at the end grain of a redwood 2x6 in the local lumberyard reveals only four to six growth rings per inch, which limits the board’s long-term dimensional stability. This means that it’s inappropriate for the gates we make. Without redwood, there are only a handful of species with the tannins that provide resistance to the decay organisms that can thrive in any landscape. Flourishing along Photos this page and facing page: left, courtesy of Prowell Woodworks; center and right, Clinton Perry